The Diesel and Petrol Degrading Strain ?HC19? of Bacillus albus

A gram positive, rod shaped bacterial strain HC19 was isolated from the soil of a local river bank in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh; which was tested for its ability for the bioremediation of diesel and petrol oil. The bacterial strain was observed to grow at 37 to 40 degree Celsius. The isolated colonies were further plated on growth media with different NaCl concentration which depicted that the species is halophilic in nature. The turbidity (cell density) of the strain was measured with UV spectrophotometer at 600nm; for which the HC19 strain was inoculated in test tubes consisting Nutrient broth media, different NaCl concentration (50mM, 100mM, 500mM and 1M) for different test tubes. The turbidity was measured for the strain in presence of crude oil and NaCl (500mM, 1M). This resulted in maximum degradation of diesel and petrol oil at salt concentration of 500mM. Identification tests were conducted by which the strain was concluded to belong to the Bacillus species as per the phenotypic reference of �Bergey�s manual of Determinative Bacteriology�. The bacterial sample was identified as Bacillus albus strain with the 16srna sequencing. The bacterial sequence of Bacillus albus with the property of bioremediation of diesel and petrol has been published in U. S National library of medicine, NCBI with the accession number as MK999906.